No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump accidentally reveals biggest campaign vulnerability

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

Trump exposes his biggest vulnerability for Democrats to capitalize on. Brian interviews Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about how to approach a Democratic Party split over Joe Biden, his response to certain Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and JD Vance who tried to blame Democrats for Trump’s shooting, and his reaction to even Republicans trying to distance themselves from Project 2025. Pre-order Shameless: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shamelessShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Trump exposing his biggest vulnerability for Democrats to capitalize on, and I interview Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about how to approach a Democratic Party split over Joe Biden, his response to certain Republicans like Marjor Tiller Green and J.D. Vance trying to blame Democrats for Trump's shooting, and his reaction to even Republicans trying to distance themselves from Project 2025. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. I want to point your attention to one moment from Trump's first post-convention rally in Michigan, where he said this. And you know, the other side's going around trying to make me sound extreme.

Like, I'm an extremist. I'm not. I'm a person with great common sense. I'm not an extremist at all. Like some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project 25, and I don't even know. I mean, some of them I know who they are, but they're very, very conservative. just like you have, they're sort of the opposite of the radical left, okay? You have the radical left, and you have the radical, right?

And they come up with this, I don't know what the hell it is, it's Project 25. He's involved in Project, and then they read some of the things, and they are extreme. I mean, they're seriously extreme. But I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know anything about it. But what they do is misinformation and disinformation. The expression here, a hit dog will holler. It's not just rare, but almost non-aggot.

existent to see Donald Trump show any weakness on any policy issue. Like, this is a guy who, at the same rally in Michigan, complimented Chinese President Xi for, quote, ruling with an iron fist. He is openly fantasizing about autocracy, meaning it's not like Trump to stray away from an issue that might otherwise seem unpopular. His supporters literally cheer him on when he complains about flushing the toilet, not exactly a discerning crowd. And he doesn't seem afraid to embrace any position, really, because he knows how undiscerning

his audience is, which is why it's so telling then that Trump is trying so hard to run away from Project 2025. If you didn't think that it was damaging to him before, the fact that he is so desperate to distance himself really does give the whole game away, especially considering his denials are a complete BS. Are we really supposed to believe that the guy whose own top White House officials authored this project has no idea what it is, including literal cabinet secretaries like Russell vote, his Office of Management and Budget Director, and Christopher Miller, his acting

Secretary of Defense, and Ben Carson, his HUD Secretary, and Peter Navarro and Paul Danz and Rick Dearborn and Ken Cuccinelli, and literally 200 more administration officials whose sole intent is to implement this project when Trump gets into office, which was quite literally what Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, said in public. We've been working with all of them on one project since soon after Joe Biden took the oath of office before any conservative presidential candidates had even entered the race. As my friend and colleague Paul Danz before talked about briefly, our project 2025 has developed a comprehensive policy agenda, but even more importantly, recruiting

people, 20,000 people to go into the next administration, hopefully to help take back this country for you and for your audiences. We want no credit. We want the American people. If President Trump is elected again, President Trump and his administration to take credit for that, but it will also be a great sign if all of this is successful, that in fact, as we know in our prayer time, but maybe not every time when we're watching the news, that the Lord is still smiling upon America. So, yeah, either Trump is dangerously ignorant about what everyone who would staff his White House would do once in the White House,

or he's just saying what he has to say to fool the rubs out there. into thinking that he's got nothing to do with Project 2025 because he knows it's politically toxic. I think you can probably guess which one it is. And on the off chance that you can't guess, you really don't have to because Kevin Roberts then explained that also in public. So when you see President Trump say this and what you envision as being behind it tactically. Well, I think it's the sign of a great leader who understands he's in a terrific political news cycle. He's run a really good campaign from start up to this point. And the left's mischaracterization of Project 2025 had become a liability. I think we've seen that really turn around in the last few

days since that statement. So no hard feelings from any of us at Project 2025 about the statement because we understand Trump is the standard bearer and he's making a political, tactical decision there. Okay. First of all, do these people think these interviews are like Shakespearean asides where the audience can't hear what they're saying, we have internet and ears. When you say stuff out loud, we will eventually hear it. But second, like, this is the whole ballgame. Even Roberts admitted that Trump is just saying what he has to say because he knows that Project 2025 is bad politics. And he'll pretend that he has no idea who's behind it when of course he knows who's behind it. And he'll pretend that he has no idea what's in it when, of course, he knows

what's in it. And he has every intention of enacting it. Like the one provision, for example, which I maintain is the single most chilling policy proposal in the history of this country. And that's Trump reinstating what's called Schedule F. So this is an executive order that Trump tried passing once in October of 2020. He lost in November of 2020. So this never took effect. It would reclassify hundreds of thousands of career civil servants who populate the government right now, people who work at the DOJ, FBI, IRS, FCC.

It would reclassify them as political appointees. So right now the way it works is a president can only replace about. 4,000 people in the government when he takes office. Trump wants to expand it to almost everyone. He wants to be able to replace hundreds of thousands of experts in their fields with Trump loyalists. Think for a moment about what a lawless president could do if, for example, the DOJ is staffed not with career prosecutors whose loyalty is to the law, but political appointees

whose loyalty is to Trump. Remember, for example, in 2020, when Trump and Republicans called for ballots to be thrown out in places like Detroit or Philly. or Milwaukee. And of course, it didn't work then because Schedule F wasn't in effect, and we had real prosecutors at the DOJ who wouldn't humor that kind of nonsense. But if it does go into effect in Trump's in office, and now you have thousands of Trump's sycophants in charge of validating those claims and deciding, you know what, we think there was fraud in these Democratic strongholds, and those votes have to be thrown away. That means that suddenly, all

the votes in big population centers at the heart of these bogus fraud claims would be at risk of getting tossed out. Think about what happens in elections when the votes in places like Philly or Detroit or Milwaukee get thrown away. With that kind of power, it means Democrats quite literally could never win another election again. What happened in 2020 was them testing the fence to see where it was weakest, and they fixed the stuff that didn't go in their favor. So this plan wouldn't be the first steps toward autocracy. It would be autocracy. So yeah, Project 2025 is dangerous, and the more people who know about it can recognize the ways in which it fundamentally change our country. And the problem for Trump is that more and more people are now

learning what it is, which is why he's trying so hard to distance himself from it. But it's his plan, authored by his people, carried out by his White House. So take his denials as proof that we are hovering above the target here. If ever there was a topic to double down on, it is the one he's trying really hard to distract you from. Next up is my interview with Pete Buttigieg. But first, two quick announcements. The first one is I'm going on tour. So if you live in New York or D.C. or L.A., and you want to see me in person with Al Frank in New York, Jen Saki in D.C. or John Favreau in L.A. in L.A., in L.A. or click the link in the show notes of this episode. There are still plenty of seats in D.C., but we are about to sell out in L.A. and New York. And the second is that my book

itself is coming out in just a few weeks now. So if you haven't yet ordered shameless and you want a free-signed bookplate that's only available during this pre-order period. Again, you can head it over to Brian Tyler Cohen.com slash book or again, click the link in the show notes. I really appreciate it. Okay, here's my interview with Pete Buttigieg. I'm joined now by the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Of course. So the issue of whether or not President Biden will remain on the ballot has obviously become a very big new story right now. On one hand, we have the most legislatively successful president of our Lifetimes. On the other, there are concerns about his ability to prosecute the case for a second

term. So what do you say to an audience that's largely split on this issue? So because of the campaign rules and because I'm here as secretary, I can't talk about the campaign side of things. What I can't talk about is what a good president as well as a good man and a good boss, Joe Biden, is. And as you noted, a record of accomplishment that no modern president can really compare to in terms of the legislation that's gotten done, the things I've been here in LA marking today from ports to buses to transit. And that's just a piece of it. It's just the transportation piece of it. So I'm really proud to be part of this team. Now, you were in Pennsylvania this week. Obviously, the shooting in Pennsylvania happened just about a week ago when Donald Trump was shot at his

rally in Butler. There were a faction of Republicans, and that includes Marjorie Taylor Green, J.D. Vance, who was obviously chosen as Donald Trump's VP pick, who wasted zero time in basically pinning the blame on democratic rhetoric. What's your reaction to that charge? Well, it's absurd. And to be clear, President Biden said what I think most Americans felt, which is that you cannot make any excuses for any political violence. And in his Oval Office address, he called to the grace and decency of this country. And while there were some voices that were quick to politicize this. I will note that generally, not universally, but generally, that view came from across, the right view came from across the political

spectrum and across the country, saying that we cannot tolerate political violence. Now, we do need, I think, to go one step further and insist that you can't be against political violence selectively. Right. It is horrific and wrong for there to have been an attempt on President Trump's life. It was horrific and wrong for their to be an attempt on Gretchen Whitmer's life. This is often short-handed in the press as a kidnapping plot, but just to be clear, this was a kidnap and murder plot against Gretchen Whitmer. It was horrific and wrong for there to be the shooting that injured Steve Scalise, Republican member of Congress. It was horrific and wrong when there was an attempt on the lives of the Pelosi's that nearly killed Paul Pelosi.

anywhere you look, certainly whether we're talking about January 6th or these lone wolf events, there is only one legitimate answer, and that is that violence has absolutely no place in our politics. And anytime we see anybody flirting with violent rhetoric, we need to confront it. Yeah, and I think it's especially ironic that, you know, I know you can't speak on this because of hatch act's concerns, but, you know, it has been Donald Trump who kind of laughed off the kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer, who laughed off and reposted an image of. of President Biden hogtied in the back of a truck who incited the events of January 6th and is now predicating in large part his reelection campaign on freeing those insurrectionists

who were jailed as the result of those crimes. So again, to your point, you know, you can't do this selectively. If you want to be against political violence, then you can't just be against it when it happens to your own side. You have to be against it across the board. Categorically. Now, pivoting to Project 2025 here, that has become a liability for Republicans as more more and more Americans actually figure out what the hell it is. What does it say that Republicans

are now effectively running away from their own agenda? It's pretty alarming stuff. And to be clear, it's been embraced by a number of congressional Republicans that we deal with and work with at the U.S. Department of Transportation. And just taking the transportation piece alone, you look at what's in there, privatizing highways, tolling them. They even came out against Vision Zero. That is our vision to end traffic deaths, roadway deaths in this country. I just can't think of something that should be less partisan than the idea we don't want to get people killed on our roadways. Being against our railway safety rules, like the rule that says if you've got a two

mile long train running through a community carrying hazardous material, you ought to have at least, as general rule, you ought to have at least two people on it. I think that's pretty commonsensical. Most Americans are probably shocked to know that that wasn't a rule until we made it one. And this think tank project says that we should get rid of it. You just look at item after item. Which, by the way, as a quick aside, is especially ironic considering those are the same people who are very quick to blame you for what happened in East Palestine. Yeah. And yet those same people in Congress are nowhere to be found right now when there's a bipartisan railway

safety act still waiting its turn. It moved through committee in the Senate, and that's pretty much it. Airline Consumer Protection. You know, we moved to hold airlines accountable for unfair and deceptive practices, this proposal says that we shouldn't even have the ability or the authority to do that. It proposes getting rid of discretionary grants, like the one that we were celebrating this morning at the Port of Long Beach to install thousands and thousands of feet of on-dock rail, which means that you can move containers onto trains without having to wait for a truck to get ready. It takes about 750 trucks to move one train worth of containers, if you count all the movements, which is a clear win for our supply chain. So it's just such a backward way.

of thinking and it does seem now that that there are some congressional Republicans and others who were kind of embarrassed by and trying to tip to away from but let's be very clear this is their agenda this is not coming from like some dude you know with with with a blog somewhere I mean this is the Heritage Foundation this is like the intellectual engine of the policy apparatus of certainly every conservative administration in my lifetime the same Heritage Foundation by the way that is quite literally sponsoring the RNC right now you know

I'm not sure whether they're also sponsoring Matt Gates's Botox, recent Botox budget, but that would obviously be more significant outlay. Back to Project 2025, within that 900-page framework is a plan where Republicans would seek to reinstate an executive order called Schedule F. And that would basically reclassify as few as 50,000, but likely hundreds of thousands of career civil servants as political appointees who would no longer be bound by an adherence. to the law or the Constitution, but rather to loyalty to a political party, what would it mean for the federal government if that section in particular is, if that executive order is reinstated?

That would be disastrous. I mean, the crazy thing is we went through this as a country in the days of, you know, Presidents Garfield and Teddy Roosevelt and figured out that a modern country ought to have a professional civil service. At our department, the Department of Transportation, about 100 people are political appointees like me. And the other 55,000 are career civil servants who don't have to be loyal to this or that present. They could be Republican, Democrat, independent, doesn't matter, don't care. What matters is, are you good at your job as a geographer for the Federal Rail Administration or an air traffic controller in the tower at LAX or as somebody who draws up the legal boundaries on safety regulations for sideview mirrors

or any of the things that people are doing day and day out to keep the American people safe. The last thing they should be thinking about is the idea that they could lose their job because they were considered insufficiently loyal to the president. That's not how it works for very good reason. Yes, if you want to be in a job like mine or some of the more kind of politically sensitive roles, those are politically appointed. I'll mention, like even a lot of the political appointees. our department are subject matter experts, some of whom have even, you know, had profiles in the

past as career civil servants and then were appointed to their roles just because they're the best person for the job and happen to be serving in a Democratic administration. But the idea that you would go back on that, after everything we've learned as a country about the importance of professionalism in public service, just flies in the face of good government. Flies in the face of good government, but here's an issue that I've been, trying to beat the drum about over and over again because I think this is really flying under the radar. But for example, if you turn the DOJ or the FBI or the law enforcement community into political appointees as opposed to career civil servants, prosecutors who know what they're doing,

who know the law, then for example, we saw in 2020 how Republicans would constantly bring these lawsuits forward or just claims in the media where they would allege that ballots that came out of Detroit were all fraudulent, ballots that came out of Milwaukee or Madison were. fraudulent, ballots that came out of Philadelphia, all areas that just so happened to be democratic strongholds, none of them counted. And of course, a lot of this was laughed off, and even someone like Bill Barr, who I don't think would get a lot of, you know, I don't think there's a lot of love loss between both of us and Bill Barr, but someone like Bill Barr, hardly a leftist. Hardly a leftist. Even he said that those claims were bullshit. And those were his

actual words, that it was bullshit. And that was likely bolstered by the fact that he would have seemed like a clown if he actually validated these claims when the rest of the Department of justice could see that there was no there there. But without those guardrails, without those career civil servants who are actually bound by, by, you know, adherence to the law, what would it look like, for example, if what happened in 2020 happens, let's say, let's say, you know, just in this thought experiment, Donald Trump wins and it's 2028. And all of a sudden you have hundreds of thousands of political appointees who are running the DOJ and the FBI. What would it look like if they brought forward claims of, you know, unsubstantiated, but claims of voter fraud.

Yeah, the politicization of a law enforcement function like that would be nightmarish. And again, I'll tread carefully in my words because, you know, we actually care about following laws at the Hatch Act and that sort of thing. But I can tell you, serving in this administration, that the president, the White House, they are extremely, almost ridiculously careful about not interfering politically. with the processes of the Justice Department or law enforcement because we know that so much in our democratic system depends on keeping those things independent from politics. And you've seen that to a fault. And you've seen that, by the way,

in the way that a justice department has independently acted in ways that the White House from a political perspective might vigorously challenge and be upset with, but are not going to put a thumb on the scale because the president cares so much about the independence from politics of our judicial system? In a hypothetical event, and if you can't answer this because of hatchack considerations, that's totally fine, but in a hypothetical event where we do cross that threshold, and it ceases to be

an issue where there's career civil servants and instead we have political appointees, and you cross that threshold into kind of a system where now people are not really focused on following the law, they're just focused on staying loyal to an autocratic like figure, is there a way to come back from that? We've seen a lot of examples of countries where it does work like that, where you don't have assurances about the rule of law, places like Russia, in a different way, places like China. I don't know anybody in America who would, if they thought about it for a minute,

prefer to deal with that, prefer to be in that system. And I don't know how you get back if you allow that to happen, which is why we can't allow it to happen in the first place. Another part of the Project 2025 agenda to move toward your beat here is its hostility toward clean energy. And that's a sentiment that has largely pervaded the entire Republican Party. So first off, I feel like I need your response to this. And you think gas prices are high now? Just wait until you're forced to drive an electric vehicle.

So I don't even know how to ask this question, but how? How? Where do you begin, right? First of all, nobody's forcing anybody to drive anything, except this. I will acknowledge this. We are forcing the auto industry to innovate and make gas cars more fuel efficient, as we have done since the Nixon administration, because it saves people money at the pump. We were trying to save people money on fueling their car, whether they do it with gasoline

or whether they do it with electricity. And part of how you do that is by requiring industry to get more. efficient. When we have first introduced CAFE standards, that's what they're called, corporate average fuel efficiency standards. Again, in the Nixon years, so this is not some modern, progressive, Democrat woke invention. The miles per gallon were, I think the first standards are something like 18 miles a gallon. And then industry is like, this is too hard. We can't do this. This is over-regulation. And over the years, industry got better because we required them to step it up.

And that has been to the benefit of not just the environment, just people's pockets, not having to buy that much gas. I would add that what we are doing is making it more affordable for people to have the choice of an electric vehicle, which is more efficient, which is cheaper to fill up, which is cheaper to maintain because it has fewer moving parts, and which has finally actually become cheaper to buy. Increasingly, it's the case that if you look at an EV and a comparable gas car, partly because of our tax credits, the EV is actually coming in cheaper now. And that's been our goal to make it accessible for people who want to to choose that. We're not forcing anybody to pick one or the other. As a matter of fact, if you just look at the evolution of the industry and the charging stations, we can't do it all overnight. And that's why the goal is roughly half by the end of the decade.

It's also probably worth noting for Marjorie Taylor Green that you probably aren't too concerned about the cost of gas if you're driving an EV. So I don't know what that fearmongering was supposed to accomplish for her. If you really wanted to think it through, I suppose if everybody's driving an EV, then global petroleum markets were probably show a drop in demand, which mean oil would actually be cheaper. But I doubt she thought through all of those. Yeah, yeah, something tells me that that wasn't a very well-thought-out concept there. With that said, that was part of a broader hearing on EVs and climate, where Republicans largely threw everything that they had at you. So for those who are watching right now who have some modicum of self-respect

and didn't subject themselves to listening to Republicans, you know, beat up on you for hours on end. You're saying not everybody tuned into the Transportation and Infrastructure House Committee here? It was scintillating. Yeah. Well, for those people, I figured that we could do something of a mock hearing here. So if it's okay with you, I'll be all the Republicans, and you could be you. So I'll start. No one is even buying EVs anymore.

All right. So every year, more Americans buy EVs than the year before. And every quarter, we have seen a year-on-year growth in EV sales because more Americans keep choosing EVs. They're way more expensive than gas-powered vehicles. No, they're not. If you look at an equivalent, you look at a Chevy Bolt, you look at a Tesla in terms of the actual equivalent gas power car, the EVs are increasingly reaching parity in some cases cheaper. Okay, well, they're only cheaper because of government subsidies. We are definitely using tax credits to support American-made EVs. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than the subsidies that have been going on for years for oil and gas. Well, you say climate change is real, but the climate change is four times a year, and the climate that we're in right now is summer.

As you know, I actually got a question like this, which left me briefly speechless, which doesn't happen often. Yeah, no, look, almost every year we're having the hottest year ever recorded. This is a thing. You can't pretend this is not a thing. And most importantly, this is a thing that can be addressed in ways that actually create jobs, like developing a made-in-American. EV and EV charger industry, which is exactly what President Biden and this administration are doing. There aren't enough charging stations, and so range anxiety is preventing people from even wanting EVs. Yeah, so the truth is there aren't enough charging stations. That's why we are helping to build them. The number of charging stations mainly put in by the private sector has roughly doubled now,

coming up on 180,000 just since Joe Biden took office. But we don't think the private sector will be able to create the entire network because there are some places where it's not yet profitable, which is why we think we need to get involved and support the states in building out chargers, even though about 80% of EV charging happens at home, it is important to have publicly available EV chargers. We are working on a plan to make sure by the end of the decade there are more than half a million of them, including through supports for every state, and by the way, every state red blue and purple, has filed its plan and is already going through the process of starting to procure those chargers. We've even seen the first handful actually

be installed, although most of that is going to be in the out years. But by the end of this decade, we'll have it done. All right. Well, all good answers, but I'm not going to change my positions on anything because I'm still getting oil and gas money. So, all right. With that said, transportation is the biggest source of carbon pollution in the country right now. So can you talk about the update that you have as far as electric buses right here in Los Angeles? Yes. We were just at a maintenance facility with L.A. Metro, where they are updating and putting to work new zero emission buses. We just had a $77 million award to L.A. to help do that. But we're doing this for facilities and transit agencies across the country from some of the

country's biggest like L.A. to rural transit in some cases to help them operate, own and purchase and operate these cleaner vehicles. We're also doing it with Made in America expectations, which means we're helping send that demand signal to build up a domestic electric bus industry. And what it means is cleaner air, certainly for the workers who, who, like bus operators who are on these buses every day, but also just for riders, neighborhoods. And it's also, I think, over the long run, going to have a reliability benefit because these things have fewer moving parts over time. They're less liable to break down. When you take into account clean energy and moving in that direction, this stuff is cheaper.

It's better for the environment. It's more popular across the board. It's just a win-win on everything. Do you ever have concessions from Republicans, for example, when you do do these hearings, from, you know, where they kind of acknowledge, if not publicly, behind the scenes that, that, you know, that they don't understand why they're so opposed to something that across the board is just good? You know, I really have trouble sometimes understanding why, for example, when they, they themselves drive an EV, which many of them do, because they figured out it's kind of the right answer for them and their family, that they still adopt this messaging, which I just don't think is going to age well. I'm not claiming that this transition is easy. This is the biggest transformation of the auto industry since the auto industry began. But that's precisely why we can't let America fall behind on it. This is happening.

This is happening in the world auto market with or without us. China isn't subsidizing their EV makers because the Chinese Communist Party is a huge, a kind of environmentalist group of environment buffs. They're doing it because they understand the economic. security and strategy implications of trying to dominate that market. Now, the Biden administration is working to protect that, to try to keep that at bay while we build up a homegrown market. But the point is, the decision is not, are we going to use gas cars forever or use EVs? The question is, are we going to be left behind as the world moves to EVs, or are they going to be made in America in places like Indiana, where I grew up? Kokomo, Indiana, Homer Chrysler, one of the things that got me

into politics was fighting to stand up for Chrysler when there was a big fight over whether it was the right decision in the Obama administration to keep Chrysler in business. Some of those facilities are being retooled now that employ thousands of people to make electric vehicles and vehicle components. Seeing the inevitability of this change from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles and knowing the implications here, not that it's going to be like a future where we determine whether we're going to have gas-powered vehicles or EVs, it's going to be EVs, that's just the way the world is moving and knowing that we can either seed control to China or have control right here in the United States, when you have a Republican Party who's so much

of their identity is predicated on their purported opposition to China, how do they reconcile those two things where they are fighting for a fossil fuel controlled future, which would hand over the reins of clean energy and clean energy manufacturing and EVs and EVV battery creation, all to the country that they claim to stand against. The only explanation I can think of is that their fidelity to oil and gas profits and the status quo there is stronger than their fidelity to the idea of making sure

the U.S. beats China economically. I just don't know how else to explain it. Yeah, I think it's pretty simple right there. Well, you know, so much of our government is marked by an inability to cooperate, to work together. And there is really no incentive structure more broadly for the right to do anything along with the left. It just doesn't exist in today's Republican Party. And yet, even despite that, here's what Congressman Dusty Johnson said to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Secretary. Of course, there's always going to be a certain number of things you and I disagree on, but I have to start with a compliment in a town where so many of folks, both in my party and your own, seem to peddle fear and anger, some of them almost exclusively. You bring a far more professional and respectful approach to your work and the communication that I get for you and your team I think helps all of us be better. So thank you with that. So what does it say that even Republicans who largely exist to break government,

to prove that it can't work, have recognized your ability to take your job seriously and actually deliver for Americans? Well, I know this can sound naive, but I really believe in it that if you put your head down and do good work and engage people in good faith on honest terms. You can get some credit for that, not with everybody, but Dusty Johnson is an example of a, he's a very conservative Republican. I disagree with him on probably 95 out of 100 things,

but he's also an honest person who recognizes that even while we're disagreeing, we can engage on things that are going to make South Dakota better off where he's from or that just don't have any ideological valence to him that we just know are going to do some good. And so, you know, I do believe that at the very least you can get credit for engaging with somebody or their office on honest terms. And I found whether dealing with some tough characters in my own party back when I was mayor or working across the aisle today, if you treat people with the assumption for the benefit of the doubt that they'll respond the way you wish they would versus how you fear they might, sometimes they actually do. Perfectly put, we'll leave it there. Secretary Buttigieg, thanks so much again.

Thank you. Thanks again to Pete. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show,

please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more. Thank you.